Author's Note: Yay! 100 reviews! Thank you so very very much to everyone who has taken the time to read this! A special thanks to The Secret Sal for being the 1st and 100th reviewer (love you sweet cakes! *mwauh!*) and I foresee this story coming to a close very soon! (The end of June at the earliest and the end of July at the latest!)

"Are you even listening or what?"

Itachi blinked a few times, hoping that by doing so, his brain would more quickly register the words leaving Sasuke's mouth. "I'm trying." He sighed and sat up straighter in bed.

Sasuke stood at the foot of the bed with his arms crossed in front of his chest, impatiently waiting for Itachi to find a more comfortable position.

"So you scheduled an appointment with Kakashi and talked it over with Kisame as well?" Itachi asked once he secured one of his pillows under his arms to use for leverage.

"Of course I talked it over with him! I talked to him about his work schedule so I could find a time for him to meet with Kakashi, scheduled it, and told him when to be there, who to ask for, and what to expect. I explained it in such simple terms that a child could've done it."

"Sasuke." Itachi warned. "Do you speak to your clients that way?"

"He's not my client Itachi. This is not a professional matter, it's a personal one." Sasuke shot back.

"But don't you think it would be a good idea to treat it as if it were a professional matter for when you do acquire a job at a law firm? To obtain some real world experience outside of the classroom?"

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "Whatever. It's not like I said that to his face. It was professional, Itachi. It was professional all the way up until he sent me this lame text message telling me that he wanted to cancel and doesn't answer his phone for the rest of the night. That's when it stopped being professional."

"Did he say why he wanted to cancel?" Itachi sighed. In a perfect world, he would be sleeping instead of playing the role of mediator and desperately trying to fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle. But this wasn't a perfect world. He had cancer and was required to stay in the hospital for the duration of his treatment while his roommate and brother fought each other over the most senseless things.

Sasuke scoffed. "After the day I had, I didn't want to hear it."

It's like pulling apart two fighting children on a playground. Itachi mused. "What happened afterwards?"

"Then he started apologizing and offering to pay for the cancelled appointment which is stupid because there's nothing he can do! Kakashi is helping him as a favor to me. He doesn't do court cases anymore – he teaches college students. And because it's a simple matter of estate, he's not gonna charge the guy anything."

"Did you tell Kisame that?"

"No because I had everything covered. I made the arrangements with Kakashi, I worked out a time with your roommate and that was that! I even took precautions and told Kisame to be there and hour late because I knew that Kakashi would be at least an hour late himself!"

"Did Kisame know that?"

"It doesn't matter because Kisame cancelled before he could even meet the guy! If he'd gone to the appointment and sent me a text asking where Kakashi was, then I might have told him but that's not the point. The point is, the appointment was supposed to be at five thirty, and I told Kisame to be there an hour later because that's when Kakashi would've showed up."

At this point Itachi decided to drop the subject of the appointment time because they were going in circles now. "Fine, I get it. So what happened next?"

"I walked away to make myself a salad because I hadn't eaten anything since one and he's still going off about finding a lawyer he could pay for himself or something."

Itachi shook his head. "I'm still confused as to how this all escalated, Sasuke—"

Sasuke, who had been staring out the window, spun around to face Itachi with wide eyes. "Don't ask me! Ask him! It's not my fault that he got stabbed if that's what you're getting at!"

"Wait, what?"

"He got pissed off and threw a punch at me while I was holding a knife! What did he think was going to happen?" Sasuke shouted and lowered his voice to mutter "Fucking moron."

"So you stabbed him!?" It was clear that he was no longer dealing with children on the playground. He was dealing with barbarians on a war path.

"On accident! I was cutting a tomato for my salad when he decided to start throwing punches. I turned around out of instinct to dodge it and the knife went into his side."

Barbarians. Absolute barbarians.

"Don't look at me like that I took him to the hospital and stayed with him until I knew he'd be fine. It was just a butter knife, Itachi. It didn't even puncture anything and took like two stitches to sew up. He was fine."

This is what Itachi knew so far. Sasuke offered to help Kisame move back to Suikazan's and asked Kakashi to do it as a favor. The two scheduled a meeting time an hour after the actual meeting time unbeknownst to Kisame because Kakashi was known for being tardy. Kisame asked Sasuke to cancel the appointment via text message and didn't answer any of Sasuke's calls. When Sasuke returned home Kisame attempted to apologize for cancelling on such short notice but Sasuke wasn't listening and instead opted to make a salad. Kisame became enraged, threw a punch which Sasuke dodged and somehow Kisame ended up with a butter knife in his side in the emergency room last night.

He was tired. All Itachi wanted to do was close his eyes and drift off to sleep until one of the nurses checked on him later on. But instead he was trying to understand the events of an evening that no one wanted to talk about.

Shaking his head, he leaned forward to prop an elbow on his blanketed knee and closed his eyes.

"What?" Sasuke spat.

Itachi glanced up at him with tired eyes. "I know you're upset—"

"Wouldn't you be furious too if somebody pulled a stunt like that!?"

"Let me finish." He warned, promptly shutting Sasuke up. "I know that you're upset about not being a candidate for my bone marrow transplant."

Sasuke furrowed his brow. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"It has to do with everything, Sasuke. You're frustrated that I'm sick with cancer, you're frustrated that there's nothing more you can do to help me, and you're angry at the world, Sasuke. You're angry at the world and you're taking it out on everyone around you."

"That's not true!" Sasuke shouted once more. "I'm doing everything I can do help you out here! I moved back into your apartment, and I'm trying to help your roommate move back to the stupid garage he cares so much about!"

"Maybe you should wait to help him out until I'm better…"

"When's that gonna be? Huh? You've been here for almost a month now and the chemo drugs aren't working! You need a bone marrow transplant now and siblings are usually the best match but I'm not a match for you! And mom and dad are dead so now we have to wait!" He cried, his voice starting to crack slightly.

"Sasuke, sit down, please."

"We have to wait and…and…and who knows what'll happen to you if we wait too long! If we can't find a donor! You'll just keep getting sicker and sicker and then what!? Then I'll have to talk to Kakashi about your will and estate and end up kicking your idiot of a roommate out myself!"

With every sentence, Sasuke's face grew redder and redder as his eyes started to glaze over. "Sasuke, please, sit down." Itachi pleaded once more, patting a space beside him on the bed. "You're overreacting. It might not even come to that." He coaxed his younger brother.

But Sasuke was too far gone as his mouth started to quiver and the tears started to spill over. "You don't know that though! You don't know that! If you die, I'll be all alone. I'll be all alone and the only thing I'll be able to remember you by is how I spent your last days screaming at you about your stupid roommate, and how I didn't even know you had cancer until you were admitted into the hospital."

Without hesitation, Itachi placed the pillow he had been holding at the foot of the bed and tossed the covers off his legs. He still wasn't clear what was said Tuesday night that would move Kisame to punch him in the face, but he didn't need to. Less than five feet away from him, his stoic little brother was facing reality. And after being strong in the face of Itachi for so many weeks, trying so hard to make up for the things he'd done wrong and keeping everything inside, he was starting to crumble.

As tired as Itachi was, seeing his twenty-five year old brother sobbing so hard that his shoulders shook pained him more than the hundreds of needles he'd been poked and prodded with over the past month. "Shhh…it's alright. It's alright." He said, collecting Sasuke into a tight hug.

Not surprisingly, Sasuke allowed himself to be comforted and rested his forehead on Itachi's shoulder since he was roughly the same height as his older brother. "I didn't even want to help him."

"Don't worry about that right now, Sasuke. I understand. You don't need to explain yourself."

"I could care less about his dead boss or the garage he used to live in." He said between sniffles.

Despite Itachi's words, it was apparent that Sasuke was going to say what he wanted to say so Itachi let him. "Then why did you offer to help him?"

"Because I'm broke, nii-san." He said, looking up to meet Itachi's eyes.

"You're broke?"

Sasuke nodded shakily. "You were right. I thought I had everything figured out but I didn't. My jobs barely cover my monthly rent and I tried to reduce the amount of food I bought at the store, I tried to use my car less, I tried everything."

"Why didn't you tell me? I would've loaned you some money, surely you knew I would help you if you needed it."

The younger Uchiha shook his head and pushed away from him. "I didn't ask you for help because of all the things I said to you before I moved out. I couldn't bring myself to admit that I was wrong so I did everything I could to prove to you that I could make it work. Itachi I-I-I sold the watch you gave me for graduation." He said.

And once again his face crumpled into itself as he began to sob.

While it pained Itachi to know that Sasuke would sooner sell his graduation gift before asking Itachi for help, he didn't comment. He didn't comment because witnessing Sasuke break down like this hurt more than anything else Itachi ever experienced in his thirty years of living. "It's okay."

"No it's not!" Sasuke cried and attempted to push away once more.

But Itachi simply held him tighter and propped his chin on Sasuke's shoulder. "It's o-kay. I forgive you."

"How? How can you just forgive me? Just like that?"

"I can forgive you because I was young once too and thought that I could do anything if I worked hard enough for it. And I can always buy you another watch. I'd do anything and everything in my power if it meant I wouldn't have to see you like this."

"Why?" Sasuke sniffed.

Itachi gazed into Sasuke's puffy eyes and smiled slightly. "Because you're my little brother and I love you. That's why."

Well now that we all know where the goddamned tissues are! *sniff*

The next chapter will be a Kisame chapter I'm thinking~

Until next time~!

Sasori33-001